Planning traffic surveillance in Spain: How to optimize the management of police resources to reduce road fatalities

Although traffic police enforcement is widely recognized as a key action in the road safety field, it can be a costly policy to implement. In addition, governments often impose budget constraints that can limit the resources available for activities such as law enforcement and surveillance. To evalu...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Castillo Manzano, José I., Castro Nuño, Mercedes, López Valpuesta, Lourdes
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/154995
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/154995
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2023.102379
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Law enforcement
Surveillance
Traffic police management
Human police resource planning
Road fatalities
NUTS-3 regions
Descripción
Sumario:Although traffic police enforcement is widely recognized as a key action in the road safety field, it can be a costly policy to implement. In addition, governments often impose budget constraints that can limit the resources available for activities such as law enforcement and surveillance. To evaluate the impact of human traffic control resources planning on traffic fatalities on Spanish NUTS-3 regions interurban roads, this paper uses an econometric model to investigate the performance of police enforcement intensity by focusing on two crucial traffic law infractions (i.e., speeding and drunk driving). After controlling for a range of economic, demographic, climate, and risk exposure variables, results highlight the relevance of visible, human, and in-person traffic law enforcement through regular vehicle patrols for reducing traffic crashes, with a non-significant effect of automatic enforcement. Our findings have important implications for traffic police resource management regarding the effective maintenance of patrol cars and plans to digitalize and automatize police administrative tasks and procedures.